Working Paper: NBER ID: w24247
Authors: Hoyt Bleakley
Abstract: While health affects economic development and wellbeing through a variety of pathways, one commonly suggested mechanism is a "horizon" channel in which increased longevity induces additional education. A recent literature devotes much attention to how much education responds to increasing longevity, while this study asks instead what impact this specific channel has on wellbeing (welfare). I note that death is like a tax on human-capital investments, which suggests the use of a standard public-economics tool: triangles. I construct estimates of the triangle gain if education adjusts to lower adult mortality. Even for implausibly large responses of education to survival differences, almost all of today's low-human-development countries, if switched instantaneously to Japan's survival curve, would place a value on this channel of less than 15% of income. Calibrating the model with well-identified micro- and cohort-level studies, I find that the horizon triangle for the typical low-income country is instead less than a percent of lifetime income. Gains from increased survival in the 20th-century are similarly sized.
Keywords: longevity; education; income; welfare; health improvements
JEL Codes: J24; N30; O1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| lower adult mortality (I12) | increased education (I24) |
| increased education (I24) | higher income (D31) |
| lower adult mortality (I12) | higher income (D31) |